Chapter 5, Musings of an internship applicant, Examination marks?

Chapter 5, Musings of an internship applicant, Examination marks?

Hope everything is okay and going all right with your intern application. But what about your semester marks? Did you screw up your tests (as I did [:(] .. hi hi ) while busy doing these things? If you hold a marks in exams and have a decent CGPA, then no problem. By 'decency', I mean something greater than 8.5 or alike. If your average (NOTE: you should do a linear averaging of your SGPSs, do not do any weighted mean business even if your college does it) is greater that 8.5, well, you can consider yourself in a safe state. If you could impress the prof, he would at least not raise his eyebrows for your marks. But there are many of us, who may be quite efficient in doing the work, but low CGPA stands in his way.

Now there is no direct way to get rid of this problem. However you have to adhere to indirect ways and tricks. It depends very much on how you present your marks. If you have less CGPA or widely varying SGPAs ( more Standard Deviation [:D] .. a bit maths [:P] ) it is worthy not to mention your marks semester wise – just give the CGPA and that will do. If you describe your semester marks, that too low, in a detailed fashion his eyes will fall on you marks only ( as Educational details should come first in your CV). While with less marks, you may face problems in convincing the prof, that you can really work, again with high marks does not convince him either that you can work. You should not think that getting good marks is by any means, a criterion for fetching the intern. Thus matching of the mutual interests of research between you and your professor, (and of course publication in related field) continues to remain the most dominating factor. And marks, as a matter of fact – as a general rule (for the sake of a format rather) must be mentioned in your CV, that too in the beginning. So it is your duty how to present your semester marks. For example, if you have a trend of marks gradually increasing from the first semester until now, and the average CGPA is around 8.5 you can mention your semester marks – he may feel, this guy is getting better now [:)]. And another thing – don't boast of your marks, if it is on the higher end. Simply and politely mention it in your cv. What on earth do you assure your prof by standing first in a semester exam? “I have been regularly the first boy/girl of my class” – this type of statements have negative effect on your mail, he will no longer read the rest of the mail [:(]. Finally note, that how you convince the prof depends upon you and your style of saying. Don't screw up things by sending wrong mails to wrong persons or wrong details etc. When you click the 'send' button, the episode is over with that prof (however, if you feel that the particular prof is very likely to take you and he doesn't reply you are always free to send him a second mail , but do mention that you sent a mail earlier). Don't worry! Be Happy – after all – All is Well. Isn't it?

Chapter 4, Musings of an internship applicant, Where to apply?

Chapter 4,  Musings of an internship applicant, Where to apply?

Enough of guidelines to prepare yourself before you click on the “send” button of your mailbox. So… you have completed with all your routine works or rather your homework to boost up your eligibility and capability as a potential applicant. But whom would you send your application to? Here comes the tragedy of the multimillion search results. As you go through the search results, you will find most of the internships as they call sometimes, as “summer-schools”, and you have to pay a whole lot of money to attend them which are basically worthless as per your intentions are concerned. Another kind of thing which you can find, that they are recruiting people for a long period, say for 1 year or so, which again will not serve your purpose. Thus you have to keep on filtering the search results and refine your search again and again. The process is extremely cumbersome is requires a lot of patience and searching skills. My job here is make your task as easier as I can, so I will suggest you some technical methods following which you can tame your search domain reasonably well and have full control over the search results.

Maintain a hierarchical database of your search results in separate folders. What I am trying to say can be better explained by the following figure: 

Each of the blocks represents a separate folder with, parent folders and subfolders as shown. This is a schematic diagram and you can incorporate more places to apply as you wish. This is an example to show you how you can organize properly, so that your time spent in searching are not wasted. In each of the target folder (leaf nodes), keep a file containing names of the persons of whom to apply, his mail id, webpage, research interests etc. Whenever you compose the mail intended for that person, you can once again see his research interests, browse through his cv and so on. This organization will save you a lot of time, as your search becomes much more localized.

Plan your search before beginning. For example, when you look for an opportunity at IIT Kharagpur, directly go to the respective departments homepage, check out those people whose research matches with your line of work. For companies, sometimes there are separate pages for internships, search for it. Also check whether they conduct any official summer internship program (for example, IIT Kanpur conducts SURGE, Summer Undergraduate Research Grant in Engineering) or student exchange program (MICTS, DAAD etc.).

Use Social networking sites, (Orkut / Facebook): These are indeed great tools which can help you to gather a lot of information, particularly from communities. You can also contact some of your seniors or fellow friends who have already done some sort of interns, to discuss and get ideas. If your senior is in some industry where you wish to apply for, you must talk to him before applying there. What more!! Best of luck and happy applying [ : D].